Description: Next week summer school starts. I am teaching a blended learning physical science course. Out of five days I will spend two days face to face with my students, the other three days they will be at home completing an online portion of the curriculum. Impact: I have never taught an online course before. I am using part of the physical science curriculum through Plato Courseware. Two weeks ago I completed one-day training session on how to set up a class and how to find the content. Summer school is only three weeks long so I had to go through each unit’s lesson, application, questions, practice tests and then a mastery test to decide which units I would teach face to face and which I would teach online. The videos, visual effects, auditory speeches and images are awesome! I was amazed at easy the lesson flows when you have these added into the lesson. I was nervous about teaching an online course but I have a great support team of IT people both in my district and through the Plato online support. I never thought that I would ever teach an online course considering I never thought I would attempt to complete a degree all the while sitting in front of my computer. These next six weeks (three for the first semester and then three for the second semester) will be very exciting and also a lot of work but I am looking forward to the challenge!
Intent: While working through this entire curriculum I have discovered that many of the concepts I teach throughout the year may be better to taught through Plato. Some of the chemistry - atomic theory, the atom, balancing chemical equations is extremely difficult for my students to comprehend and I am thinking that using Plato and the visual simulations will make more sense than me trying to draw it! I am in communication with the head of the IT department to see if Plato is something I can implement into my classroom- if not I have got to find some virtual simulations that are similar to Plato. I am also beginning to see that teaching science fully online may be a reality.
Impact: I have never taught an online course before. I am using part of the physical science curriculum through Plato Courseware. Two weeks ago I completed one-day training session on how to set up a class and how to find the content. Summer school is only three weeks long so I had to go through each unit’s lesson, application, questions, practice tests and then a mastery test to decide which units I would teach face to face and which I would teach online. The videos, visual effects, auditory speeches and images are awesome! I was amazed at easy the lesson flows when you have these added into the lesson.
I was nervous about teaching an online course but I have a great support team of IT people both in my district and through the Plato online support. I never thought that I would ever teach an online course considering I never thought I would attempt to complete a degree all the while sitting in front of my computer. These next six weeks (three for the first semester and then three for the second semester) will be very exciting and also a lot of work but I am looking forward to the challenge!
Intent: While working through this entire curriculum I have discovered that many of the concepts I teach throughout the year may be better to taught through Plato. Some of the chemistry - atomic theory, the atom, balancing chemical equations is extremely difficult for my students to comprehend and I am thinking that using Plato and the visual simulations will make more sense than me trying to draw it! I am in communication with the head of the IT department to see if Plato is something I can implement into my classroom- if not I have got to find some virtual simulations that are similar to Plato.
I am also beginning to see that teaching science fully online may be a reality.